4 ms·

>I wasn't expecting full VR tours of the place (though it is doable [1]), but I did expect to be able to walk through the place in 3D and see how it will look l

>I wasn't expecting full VR tours of the place (though it is doable [1]), but I did expect to be able to walk through the place in 3D and see how it will look like in the winter morning and summer afternoon. Hell no. What are you smoking? Architecture is a competitive industry. If you want a 3d model you can walkthrough it's not the end of the world - even Trimble sketchup pro has a built in walkthrough tool. You can also export most models to something like cinema4d for a video walkthrough. The models you expect to walkthrough to get some idea of light will require new texture work, lighting, and lots of small details that they otherwise have no reason to add. But those all cost time and money they probably had no idea you expected from them. The thing is that you probably didn't make your expectations clear up front. If you did architects would quote you a price with that included. But theyd also say something like x revisions and then it's $125/hour so you dont waste their time. It's a pretty reasonable if you have specific non standard expectations. They'll be happy to mark up the value of having someone else do it and charge it to you.

eps 7y ago
I asked all firms we spoke with how they work. None even had an option of making tweaks to the project with real-time 3D feedback. That is - change something and see how it looks in 3D on the second monitor, move the camera around, change time of the day, turn lights on and off, then try it differently, check again, try third, etc. Aim for dozens of "revisions" in a scope of one hour - that's not even remotely possible. The existing model - get a draft, send in a list of tweaks, get a revision, send more comment, get another revision - is ridiculously inefficient and excruciatingly slow. What can be decided in a couple of hours takes days if not weeks. Coming to the architect's office and doing the same by sitting aide by side with then doesn't help much, it's still not a real-time and they get frustrated because that's not how they work. The problem, as I mentioned, is both in architect software lacking (what's been available in game engines for years!) and the willingness to adopt the new tech and workflows on architect's side. I mean, with all existing technologies I should be able to see my house-to-be in near exact realistic detail before we OK the project. This is NOT possible and this is supremely frustrating.
- vertex-four 7y ago
  Changing most things is hard work, not something that can be done in seconds. Have you ever done 3D modelling?
  - eps 7y ago
    I did. Changes being "hard work" is a matter of a tool not being well adapted to the job, which is a problem with the tool, not the process. If I am playing with a floor plan, then certain changes, like moving walls and openings should be as easy to do as possible. If they aren't, it's the wrong tool for the job ... which is exactly what I mentioned in the first post - that the architects routinely use heavy-lifting ArchiCAD to do design phase sketching.
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      I think you're trying to describe bim software but you don't know what it is. This already exists. The most common software for it at the moment is Revit.
- ganonm 7y ago
  There are a lot of technical reasons why this may not be possible. For example, modern real-time lighting often uses precomputed data such as lightmaps to speed up/avoid real time calculations. For static geometry and lighting much of the work can be done 'offline' before runtime however it is not unheard of for this offline process to take hours (e.g. computing high resolution lightmaps for large environments).
  - JonAtkinson 7y ago
    There has been huge advances in this area recently. Real-time ray-tracing and lighting is Nvidia’s primary marketing push right now with their RTX cards. Unity/Unreal/Blender can all produce very high fidelity real time lighting while editing. It’s great technology.
- LegitShady 7y ago

eps 7y ago

I asked all firms we spoke with how they work. None even had an option of making tweaks to the project with real-time 3D feedback. That is - change something and see how it looks in 3D on the second monitor, move the camera around, change time of the day, turn lights on and off, then try it differently, check again, try third, etc. Aim for dozens of "revisions" in a scope of one hour - that's not even remotely possible. The existing model - get a draft, send in a list of tweaks, get a revision, send more comment, get another revision - is ridiculously inefficient and excruciatingly slow. What can be decided in a couple of hours takes days if not weeks. Coming to the architect's office and doing the same by sitting aide by side with then doesn't help much, it's still not a real-time and they get frustrated because that's not how they work. The problem, as I mentioned, is both in architect software lacking (what's been available in game engines for years!) and the willingness to adopt the new tech and workflows on architect's side. I mean, with all existing technologies I should be able to see my house-to-be in near exact realistic detail before we OK the project. This is NOT possible and this is supremely frustrating.

vertex-four 7y ago
Changing most things is hard work, not something that can be done in seconds. Have you ever done 3D modelling?
- eps 7y ago
  I did. Changes being "hard work" is a matter of a tool not being well adapted to the job, which is a problem with the tool, not the process. If I am playing with a floor plan, then certain changes, like moving walls and openings should be as easy to do as possible. If they aren't, it's the wrong tool for the job ... which is exactly what I mentioned in the first post - that the architects routinely use heavy-lifting ArchiCAD to do design phase sketching.
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    I think you're trying to describe bim software but you don't know what it is. This already exists. The most common software for it at the moment is Revit.
ganonm 7y ago
There are a lot of technical reasons why this may not be possible. For example, modern real-time lighting often uses precomputed data such as lightmaps to speed up/avoid real time calculations. For static geometry and lighting much of the work can be done 'offline' before runtime however it is not unheard of for this offline process to take hours (e.g. computing high resolution lightmaps for large environments).
- JonAtkinson 7y ago
  There has been huge advances in this area recently. Real-time ray-tracing and lighting is Nvidia’s primary marketing push right now with their RTX cards. Unity/Unreal/Blender can all produce very high fidelity real time lighting while editing. It’s great technology.
LegitShady 7y ago